17 Jun 2015

Albuquerque (NM, USA)

One flag-related news that trended this week is the proposal of a new Albuquerque, New Mexico flag by a local graphic designer, Gabe Re.

This is the current Albuquerque flag:

The flag is surely (excessively) based in New Mexico's, but much less effective. The lettering doesn't belong to a flag, and the thunderbird, a local symbol, is possibly more stylized than it should.

So this is Gabe Re's proposal:

You can find official rationale here. In summary, the flag is based in natural landscape, with red stripe representing muddy Rio Grande, yellow for the desert and the bottom-right zig-zag forming the mountains. The zig-zag pattern and the turquoise color (from gem) also relates to native art.

It's not a bad flag, but I don't like the blue touching the red, so I made the following redesign:

I think this design remembers more the Spanish flag, while retaining all the basic symbolism from previous flag. I rescued the thunderbird from previous flag, in turquoise color and less stylized.

The new flag has a better color layout, and I don't think it looks any bad.